Man fights off woman's attacker

Updated 10:56 pm, Friday, December 23, 2011

Alfred Serrano doesn't consider himself a hero, but police said he put his life in peril to come to the aid of a 77-year-old Bridgeport woman and pulled an assailant from her. The woman was fighting for her life Friday, Dec, 23, 2011, after being stomped and stabbed repeatedly with a wine glass as she walked home from a grocery store. less

Alfred Serrano doesn't consider himself a hero, but police said he put his life in peril to come to the aid of a 77-year-old Bridgeport woman and pulled an assailant from her. The woman was fighting for her ... more

BRIDGEPORT -- A 77-year-old city woman was fighting for her life Friday after being stomped and stabbed repeatedly with a wine glass as she walked home from a grocery store.

But police said the woman would have had no chance at life if it hadn't been for a good Samaritan who pushed his way through a group of onlookers Thursday afternoon to pull the woman's assailant from her.

The woman was in critical condition in the intensive care unit at Bridgeport Hospital with multiple injuries. Her alleged assailant, 31-year-old parolee Marvin Narcisse, was being held in lieu of $2 million bond on an attempted murder charge.

"That man (Serrano) is definitely a hero," said Bridgeport Police Capt. James Viadero. "He put his life in peril to come to the aid of the woman."

Alfred Serrano said he doesn't consider himself a hero. "I'm just a good Christian man who only wanted to do the right thing," said the 41-year-old city man, who works on the maintenance crew at the Webster Bank Arena at Harbor Yard. But Serrano admits he got angry when he saw this group of people just standing around while the woman was being attacked.

"I just don't understand that out of the 15 guys that were standing out there, I was the only one protecting this woman," he said.

Serrano said he was parked outside the Los Primos Market at the corner of William and Roosevelt streets smoking a cigarette while his fiancee was in the store.

"I saw this elderly lady leave the store and she was walking up the street with two bags of groceries in her hands when this big man comes running across the street toward her," Serrano said.

He said he thought the man knew the woman and was running up to give her a hug. "But he tackled this lady like she was a football player. And this lady hit the ground face first, I could hear the impact on the ground," he said.

Serrano said the man was holding a broken wine glass in his hand and he began repeatedly stabbing the woman with it.

"I was screaming at him for him to stop, but he looked too demented. So I had to do something or he was going to kill this lady. So I attacked him," he said.

Police said Narcisse looks like a prize fighter, about 6 feet tall and well over 250 pounds. Serrano said he is 180 pounds "soaking wet."

"The thing that bothered me was all the bystanders out there, all these guys but no one helped me," he said. "My fiance was screaming for other people to help me because every time he got loose from me he kept stomping on the lady's head, kicking her in the face."

Serrano said he was punched in the mouth, in the abdomen and thrown up against his car by the assailant. "But I fought this guy until the police got there. The detectives tell me I saved this lady's life. I don't consider myself a hero. I just did the right thing."

According to court records, Narcisse is on special parole for a robbery conviction in Stamford and wears a monitoring bracelet on his ankle.

Contact Daniel Tepfer at 203-330-6308 or dtepfer@ctpost.com. Follow him on twitter.com/dantepfer.